Why Data is the G.I. Joe of Fleet Safety
In the ‘80s cartoon G.I. Joe, there was a PSA at the end of each episode (don’t talk to strangers, look both ways before crossing the street, that kind of thing). After learning an important life lesson, the kid would say: “Thanks, G.I. Joe! Now I know.” G.I. Joe would reply with his famous catchphrase: “And knowing’s half the battle.”
You don’t have your own personal G.I. Joe to help you make better decisions, but with the right technology, you can have the next best thing: data. Keep reading to learn how the right data can help you make better fleet safety decisions.
Data Keeps Everyone Honest
In a typical TV show, there’s always one team pitted against the other. The ruthless terrorist organization Cobra against the G.I. Joe freedom-fighters, for instance. But in the fight for fleet safety, everyone in your organization should be on the same team. To save your skin and keep drivers and citizens safe, you must know what’s happening at the driver level and work closely with your team.
You don’t need to juggle mountains of paperwork to address FMCSA safety guidelines and DOT regulations—you need the right data.
For example, mass and velocity play a crucial role in the criticality of accidents. If you can get your drivers to slow down, you’re doing a lot to boost fleet safety and prevent serious accidents. But before you can ask your drivers to slow down, you need to know which of them are speeding and engaging in other reckless behaviors with or without realizing it.
The right driver and fleet management solution can deliver real-time data around:
- Heading and speed, two critical factors in major wrecks
- Accelerometer data that shows rapid acceleration and hard braking
- Other events associated with the vehicle, like the position of the brake and pedal, hard cornering, time spent in cruise control, “freewheeling” downhill, etc.
Once you’ve collected all the relevant data, you will have an accurate understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll know which drivers you need to reprimand or retrain. Then you can begin to define (or redefine) repeatable safety processes across your entire fleet.
Read how the right telematics solution can help you achieve all of the above.
Data Helps You Pick Up the Pieces
In the show G.I. Joe, someone from a covert special-mission unit would rush on to the scene to steer the good guys away from calamity. In real life, we must rely solely on our instincts. But no matter how experienced and cautious your drivers are, accidents can still happen.
In the event of an accident, your driver must capture the right information at the crash site. Your driver will need to:
- Take pictures of the accident scene
- Communicate back to the fleet
- Fill in the accident questionnaire
- Record the other parties’ license and other vital information
At the most basic level, fleet operators need to know right away that an accident has happened. Without the right freight technology and telematics solution in place, it may take a while to get that info. Fleet managers also need to know that everyone is safe and that all the critical data is captured before anyone leaves the crash site.
A robust fleet and driver solution can make this process a lot less painful.
Data Tells You What Happened
If you’re doing everything you can to support fleet safety, in the end, you likely won’t be found liable, and like the good guys in every TV classic, there will be proof to support your innocence. But having the right data definitely doesn’t hurt.
In the event of an accident, a robust telematics portal will be able to consolidate all the relevant data on a map. This allows everyone to see what happened in crystal-clear detail.
Take Transflo’s telematics portal for example. Within minutes of a crash, you can pull a full accident reconstruction report that shows:
- The heading of the vehicle
- The lane the driver was traveling in
- The direction of the impact
- Who is likely to have caused the crash
- The street view and satellite footage of the crash site
With the right telematics solution, you can see all this data in one consolidated view, for an accurate picture of what happened.
The Bottom-line
In the ‘80s cartoon, the G.I. Joe team helped the characters make good decisions. In real life, data does the same. With the right information at your fingertips, you can quickly find (and fix) your weakest links from a fleet safety perspective. With the right data, you will always make the right call—for your drivers, your colleagues, and your community. Click below to learn how Transflo’s fleet and driver technology solutions deliver the data you need to run a safe, compliant fleet.
